The cultural legacy of Freddy Krueger and Wes Craven’s philosophical motives for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Today is the day and I am filled with horror geekery excitement. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger are almost single-handedly responsible for my love of the horror genre. As a boy the allure of this franchise dominated my young mind. Spending nights at my grandmother's house, she let me do 3 of the things a little boy loves to do: Stay up late, eat junk food and watch scary movies. I vividly remember going to the local generic video store and ogling all the grotesque 80's VHS covers. I knew all about NOES though and any time the newest one was released I looked forward to watching it in my grandma's living room under the pillow fort while dining on pizza rolls and sherbet ice cream. Yes, those are some of my fondest memories.

Now if we look back on the heyday of the slasher genre in the 80's, I think that most of us can agree that the best film, all in all, was Halloween. John Carpenter created the boogeyman of modern cinema while making a brilliantly minimalistic film. Michael Myers also stayed within the realm of reality and didn't venture into the supernatural until the sequels. The same can be said for the original Friday the 13th.

Freddy, however, is a supernatural boogeyman from the start but was a twisted child murderer before his death. He is also a far more interesting character than the tongue-tied Mike and Jason could ever be, due in large part to the subversive brilliance of Robert Englund. And even though NOES did inspire rip off films in the vein of supernatural talking killers, the real concept of the film and the character are so original that no one has ever really tried to reproduce a villain like Freddy. He is not a creature such as a vampire, werewolf or zombie that can be recreated in film decade after decade. He is not simply a plodding silent killer that stalks his prey through city streets, after prom, at summer camp or any holiday known to man. He is a serial killer though and a demonic spirit that enters the dreams of teenagers whose parents were responsible for his demise. Freddy is sadistic yet playful and charismatic. With his four-bladed glove, fedora and red and green striped sweater, he has a style and look that can't be matched. And hailing from the dream world, the fields of play by which he can choose to torture and kill his victims are endless.

Freddy Krueger is truly a pop-culture icon like no other character in modern horror. In the 80's and 90's he was everywhere and has never faded far from our collective consciousness. The word nightmare cannot be uttered without the thought of him. He has been mentioned or appeared in numerous songs, commercials, video games and TV shows. More figurines, merchandise and Halloween costumes have been created and sold in Freddy's image than any other single villain. And I know I'm not the only one that thinks about him at Christmas whenever I see green and red together.

Enough about the monster though. What about his maker? Wes Craven is the man responsible for bringing the nightmare to life. Craven has said that his idea for NOES stems from several areas. Krueger is partly based on a homeless man that scared the crap out of Wes as a child as well as an elementary school bully. The meaty part relating to the idea of our dreams being able to harm us comes from a series of articles he read regarding the Hmong people. The Hmong are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Years ago over 20 people mysteriously died in their sleep and they were reported to be having terrible nightmares before their deaths. The deaths remain a medical mystery to this day.

In the original NOES when Nancy is undergoing a sleep study the doctor and her mother briefly discuss the fact that scientists still really don’t know what dreams are all about. There are many philosophies on the subject and one that Craven partly adopts for the mythos of Krueger is the idea that dreams can be a gateway to other dimensions. Craven also hypothesizes that when men, specifically, have nightmares this may be some type of release for the evolutionary male tendency for destructive and violent behavior. All pretty hefty stuff that you’ll have to read elsewhere if you care to know more.

Something else interesting and somewhat highbrow that Craven throws into the equation is a little Shakespeare. This occurs in the classroom scene when Nancy falls asleep and sees her dead friend in the body bag being dragged down the hallway. This all happens as a classmate reads a particularly haunting passage from Hamlet: I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

This leads me to Craven’s conception of what the parents represent in NOES. Now although all the parents care for their children’s well-being, they are either drunk, narcissistic, delusional, deceptive or all of the above. They are also obviously responsible for Krueger’s death and subsequently their own children’s demise. What we are led to is an example of the sins of the father being sowed upon the sons, referencing Shakesperean and biblical themes.

It’s believed that Craven is also criticizing the era in which the film was made. The fact that the parents rid the town of a murderer to restore a sense of protection but created dark secrets in the process plays on the suburban paranoia of the times. The film is also edited in a manner in which scenes drift between the dream world and the real world and the end of the film also suggests that the entire film could be a dream, playing into the Anti-Reagan view that America was collectively asleep.

Regardless of whether or not you buy that or even necessarily care about the subtext, NOES just proves the case that slasher films don’t all have to be a purely mindless spectacle of gore. These are some of the hopes that I have for the new incarnation of the franchise. I fear though, that real horror fans such as myself, will walk away defeated and at the time of my writing this, the first reviews are coming in and things do not sound good. I had been warned already that Michael Bay’s involvement signals epic artistic failure and looking over the repertoire of Platinum Dunes productions there is no disputing that assessment. Have no doubt though that teens will enjoy it and it will make a shit ton of cash and ultimately that is all that matters. I realize that when dealing with a remake, creativity is limited but that doesn’t mean any and all sense of drama and originality has to be replaced with pretty people and almost real-looking expensive fake explosions. However, if I’ve learned anything from the majority of today’s dumbed down horror films it’s that the obvious has to smack you in the face at every turn because God forbid that the audience use their capacity for deductive thought.

Now having ranted about the looming probability of this cash cow catastrophe, I will still be front and center tonight. If nothing else, I hope Jackie Earle Haley can muster some sort of novelty and leave the fanboy with a shred of satisfaction. Regardless of its inferiority, part of me is still pleased that a new generation of moviegoers will experience A Nightmare on Elm Street that they can possibly better relate to. Maybe a few of them will actually bother to watch the original and enjoy it…or maybe they’ll just laugh at it and realize how old Johnny Depp is…OMG.